In WW2 when there was a nip in the air one was allowed to shoot at them, however, what does one do about a chink in the curtains?

Originally Posted by rockape34

In WW2 when there was a nip in the air one was allowed to shoot at them, however, what does one do about a chink in the curtains?

I tell 'em to stop messing about with the curtains and get their toys tidied up.

It's not a term I'd use to the wife or in-laws, but on the other hand I'd be delighted if folk there would stop addressing me to my face as 'Laowei'. They don't mean anything by it, just as in The_Honest_Man's experience, but it does get a bit wearing.

Let's just forget about all this PC nonsense and just focus on good manners, eh?

Back home "chink" is definitely a racial epithet, and only used in a context in which it is intended to be derogatory, so I wouldn't use "Chinkie" here, either.

On the other hand, I've heard people use it here as an identifier, clearly without malice - a way to distinguish Ming's Garden from, say, the chip shop next door. Although many seem to be one and the same in my neighborhood.

Intent has to be accounted for here, I suppose.

Only if spoken by a niggah....

Originally Posted by chocolate_frog

It probably falls in the same slot as gollywogs and jam jars. It is racist because some moron thinks it is.

Useless fact...The word WOG isn't racist but merely means worker of the government..This being applied to immigrant workers who were bought into UK to help with labour during the war......

Originally Posted by TankiesYank

Back home "chink" is definitely a racial epithet, and only used in a context in which it is intended to be derogatory, so I wouldn't use "Chinkie" here, either.

On the other hand, I've heard people use it here as an identifier, clearly without malice - a way to distinguish Ming's Garden from, say, the chip shop next door. Although many seem to be one and the same in my neighborhood.

Intent has to be accounted for here, I suppose.

If only,

legally the intent is irrelevant, it's the effect on the 'victim' that's important.

originally 'chink' ment a fold or crease in a material - chink in the armour was where it was creased and weakened.

However, it is a derogatory term for an ethnic group, therefore racist.

Also, 'pikey' will get you locked up, and 'gypsy' is nolonger an 'appropriate' word, even though many travellers prefer to identify themselves as 'gypsy' as it gives them a sense of ethnic identity, as one said to me 'traveller makes me sound like a fecking tourist!'

I've had the pleasure of investigating loads of racial aggrivated crime with the pre-amble of "that word"

Like anything else ...

Go into a chinese restaurant with a bunch of mates and say to the waiter: "Oi chinky ... get the menu because we want to order more food than we can eat and spend a couple of hundred quid on food that cost around about 20p to prepare ... chop, chop slanty eyes", he will probably smile pleasantly and rush off rubbing his hands together.

If you went up to a chinese feller at a bus stop and called him chinky, he would probably burst your heart with that Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart technique thingy.

Australians have officially accepted (under constant review and always approved for use) the word 'WOG' as being ok. I know Aussies of Greek and S American origin who use it with much humour about themselves - harmless.

British racial term originating in the colonial period of the British Empire. It was used as a label for the natives of India, North Africa, the Mediterranean/Eastern Europe and the Middle East. By the 1950s it had become a pejorative term used in order to offend. In modern British parlance it has become less prevalent and has been applied to any type of dark skinned person.

"Wog" is a phrase used may of times by Fox and Sith although, Fox established/coined it first. The origin of the term is uncertain. Many dictionaries say "wog" possibly derives from the Golliwogg, a blackface minstrel doll character from a children's book published in 1895. An alternative is that "wog" originates from Pollywog, a maritime term for someone who has not crossed the equator. Attempts to derive "wog" from such phrases as "Worthy Oriental Gentleman", "Working On Government Service" (digging the Suez Canal) or "White Oriental Gentleman" are however considered backronyms. The use of the word is discouraged in Britain, and most dictionaries refer to the word with the caution that it is derogatory and offensive slang. The saying "The wogs begin at Calais" was originated by George Wigg, Labour MP for Dudley, in 1945. In a parliamentary debate concerning the Burmese, Wigg shouted at the Tory benches, "The Honourable Gentleman and his friends think they are all 'wogs'. Indeed, the Right Honourable Member for Woodford [i.e. Winston Churchill] thinks that the 'wogs' begin at Calais." Wigg's coinage, sometimes paraphrased as "Wogs start at the Channel" or "Wogs start at Dover", is used to characterise a stodgy Europhobic viewpoint, and more generally the view that Britain is inherently separate from (and superior to) the Continent. In this case, "wog" is used to compare any foreign, non-British person to those more traditionally labeled "wogs".

Anyway a spade is a spade or is it a darkie I cant remember now its been that long since I could even contemplate uttering such a phrase